Siegfried Hansen, Space Suit Father; Inventor Was 90

Published: July 24, 2002

LOS ANGELES, July 23—
Siegfried Hansen, an electrical engineer who 50 years ago helped design the predecessor of the hard space suit now used in NASA missions, died on June 28. He was 90 and lived in Los Angeles.

The space suit originated from Mr. Hansen's quest to improve the vacuum tube, a crucial component of electronic devices like early televisions.

Mr. Hansen believed that the only way to improve such tubes was to test them from the inside, so he and his colleagues designed a suit to be worn inside the airless atmosphere of a vacuum.

Unlike previous pressure suits, the 50-pound Mark I suit he helped design maintained constant volume and geometry, which allowed its occupant to breathe inside a vacuum while being able to bend both arms 90 degrees.

As transistor technology began rendering the vacuum tube obsolete, scientists saw a secondary use for Mr. Hansen's creation: sustaining humans as they worked outside a spacecraft above Earth's atmosphere.

Called ''the father of the EVA,'' for extravehicular activity suit, Mr. Hansen was soon modeling his brainchild on the cover of Look magazine in December 1957, two months before the Russians launched Sputnik.

Mr. Hansen was born in San Francisco and majored in electrical engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. During World War II, he lived in London and helped design early radar systems before working on vacuum tubes for General Electric at its headquarters in Schenectady, N.Y. Mr. Hansen owned what may have been the first television in Schenectady.

In 1946, he moved to California and joined Hughes Aircraft. He tested new radar equipment with the company's eccentric founder, Howard Hughes, as the test pilot.

In the 1950's, Mr. Hansen moved to Litton Industries, where he worked on the vacuum tube project that became the space suit.

NASA for the first time has turned to a suit with a hard upper torso for space-shuttle astronauts. The space agency conceptually owes much to Mr. Hansen, whose vision preceded the space program by years.

''That's how futuristic Hansen was,'' said Gary L. Harris, a space suit designer and historian. ''His ideas are still ahead of us.''

Mr. Hansen's wife of 58 years, Gwendolyn, died in 1997. He is survived by four sons, nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.